Apparently the cops cops feel no responsibility to give an accounting for why they arrested Brooke Oberwetter.

If you post a lot of comments on different sites you should check out coComment.

(Smearbund - I just can’t get enough of that word lately. That’s why I read Lew’s blog.)

A writer from Lew Rockwell’s stable finally (!) breaks ranks. Gene Callahan has had enough:

The final straw: “Last week, a statement was prepared by Ron Paul’s press secretary Jesse Benton, and approved by Ron Paul, acknowledging Lew Rockwell as having a role in the newsletters. The statement was squashed by campaign chairman Kent Snyder.”

Man, Paul’s behavior regarding these newsletters has been awful. His “I don’t know who wrote these” is about as slippery as a politician can get. Everyone who was around libertarianism in the early 90s knows Lew was in charge of these and knows Rothbard and his crew were into race-baiting back then. (By the way, notice that the longer Lew has been away from Rothbard’s influence, the more decent he’s become? I personally have found him very affable, and I can’t imagine him putting out material like this today. Just shows what hanging around Rothbard can do to you.)

Paul’s got a decent message, but he’s the wrong vehicle for delivering it.

In comments there, co-blogger Bob Murphy farvors a more traditional (*) approach, one that he likens to a blue wall of silence:

I think you are overreacting in the opposite way here, Gene. I.e. yes, I totally agree that (a) certain things in those newsletters were inexcusable, (b) RP is clearly lying about it now when he says he has no idea who wrote it, and (c) it is silly to just dismiss the inquiries as smears.

Having said all that, I do kinda wonder why Sanchez and his co-author decided to write that particular article, when the damage had already been done by the TNR one. If next week some anti-Irish magazine came out with a story that you did a bunch of drugs when you were younger (outlandish, I know), and this was getting you in trouble with your PhD committee, I wouldn’t comment to any reporter who called me up about it. And I sure as heck wouldn’t spend a few days doing research on it because “Callahan won’t come clean on this!”

Does that sound so crazy? If I were to do that, don’t you think some of your buddies would think, “Jeez, I thought Bob was Gene’s friend!” ?

I realize this sounds like cops and their blue wall of silence whenever one of them beats up a suspect, and maybe my view is just that wrong / tribal / petty. But I understand why longtime fans of LRC are lashing out at Reason on this, and don’t view Sanchez as Bob Woodward.

(* Traditional among Rockwell’s writers, that is.)

I saw Ron Paul on CNN’s Situation Room today, he was filibustering to burn up any time during which he might have to face more questions about his newsletters. One thing he said was that he would pardon anyone convicted of a non-violent drug crime. That’s pretty sweet.

But in the Fox debate tonight when the subject of illegal immigration came up he said, “The law is the law and it ought to be enforced.”

Um.

If the law is the law for wetbacks why shouldn’t the law be the law for tweakers?

Doesn’t it?

’nuff said.

“I am shocked, shocked, to find that our shock jock has been engaging in shock jockery!” - MSNBC CEO

It’s time to evaluate a five year bet.

Back in 2001 Bob Murphy, posting as Bobbi-O on anti-state.com, was optimistic about persuading people of the virtues of anarcho-capitalism. I argued that not even 1% of the population would ever be persuaded to endorse anarcho-capitalism, and asked when he thought such a feat might be accomplished.

Murphy responded confidently:

If by “endorse” you mean people who say, “Yes, I agree that would the best system, I just don’t think it’s going to happen,” then I say it will happen in five years, easy.

We’re not trying to convince people to like our favorite musicians, we’re trying to convince them that systematic theft and murder are counterproductive. Call me naive, but I don’t think it will be that hard to convince 1% to admit this. I recall my own conversion process; I had to first hear the ideas (and think they were too radical), then get disillusioned for some inconsequential reason, and at that point remember all of Rothbard et al.’s arguments that I had earlier rejected.

If I can convince my mom to vote for Harry Browne, and my good Rush Limbaugh-devotee friend to favor drug legalization after an hour conversation, I think 1% isn’t too farfetched.

Again, I’m talking about people agreeing that it would be the best system if implemented, not that these people are going to lift a finger to make it so.

I immediately offered to bet $1000 that this would not happen. Bob accepted the bet in principle, and he was backed by Gene Callahan but we never came up with a metric for deciding the outcome so no money was wagered.

The five years ended last November. Based on a population of roughly 300,000,000 Americans, Murphy and Callahan needed to come up with about 3 million ancaps.

I submit that nothing remotely like Murphy’s prediction has happened. I’m confident that there are not even 30,000 Americans who satisfy the criteria, not even close - and that’s just 1% of 1% of the population.

Two questions occur to me:

How could smart cookies like Murphy and Callahan be so far off base?

My guess is that were caught up in excitement of the (then) recent explosive growth of ancap web sites and forums. Someone in the thread said anti-state.com had been growing at a rate of 50% per month. That may have been true but it was ending as he typed, ASC’s growth has been quite modest from that moment on. What had really happened was that the relatively few people sympathetic with anarcho-capitalism suddenly all found each other through the internet in a brief space of time. And then it was over. There was no second wave.

Has this result changed their opinions about the prospects of rational evangelism?

I’d be interested to hear from Murphy and Callahan on this.

Unfortunately there is a final irony here. Not only have 3,000,000 ancaps failed to materialize but one seems to have vanished, at least from the web. It appears that Murphy’s ancap writing on the web has largely been withdrawn recently, including well over 100 articles at lewrockwell.com, anti-state.com and strike-the-root.com.

After pointing out (fairly) that many people are dishonestly accused of homophobia and racism, David Friedman goes on to argue that libertarians use certain words dishonestly:

The pattern is not limited to people whose politics I disagree with. Libertarians do the same thing. In our context, the question is how to label people who disagree with libertarian views, on particular subjects or more generally. The two popular choices are “statist” and “collectivist.”

Both are wrong. There are lots of reasons why someone might favor the draft, or minimum wage laws, or price controls, or the war on drugs. Worship of the state is no doubt one possible reason, but certainly not the only one. Belief that what really matters is the collective and not the individual is one possible reason but not the only one. Each of those views could readily be held by someone who agreed on the whole with libertarians about values, outcomes they wanted, but disagreed about the consequences of particular policies. Most obviously, someone might favor the draft because he believed it was necessary in order to defend the U.S., and want to defend the U.S. precisely because he was in favor of freedom and thought the U.S. was much freer now than it would be if someone else conquered it.

In each of these cases, the pattern is the same. We have a conclusion that might be reached for any of a variety of reasons. Someone who wants to attack the conclusion does it by picking one reason he considers particularly unattractive and indefensible, using that reason to label the conclusion, and thus (dishonestly) implying that anyone holding the conclusion does it for that reason.

This is of particular interest to me since, since Pete Bessman gets one thing right - I do identify a lot of people as collectivist and statist.

In a comment to Friedman I point out that he has called taxation robbery and robbery is widely considered unattractive and indefensible. Does this mean that in using the word “robbery” Friedman dishonestly mischaracterized the motivations of all who support taxation? No, he correctly characterized the act of slavery.

In another comment I ask Friedman about his example of someone favoring a draft:

What’s dishonest about calling someone collectivist because they favor sacrificing individuals for collective liberty?

He responds:

In the case we are discussing, someone favors sacrificing individual liberty in order to get more individual liberty. The supporter of the draft, given his factual beliefs, could reasonably enough accuse the opponent of wanting to sacrifice individual liberty–the liberty of all the people who will be enslaved when the country is conquered.

There’s a lot wrong with that answer.

But it’s obvious that “the liberty of all the people who will be enslaved when the country is conquered” is a collective standard. And this is precisely how I identify collectivists, by the standards they use to justify force. A libertarian individualist such as myself holds that force is only justified in the defense of peaceful individuals. Collectivists hold that force against individuals can be justified when it benefits the larger group. The hypothetical argument Friedman gave for conscription is collectivist because it applies a collective standard, the liberty of the group. Conscription is collectivist just as taxation is robbery, and the motivations of the supporters of conscription and taxation are irrelevant.

As to motivation - I do not say that all collectivists desire to do wrong; I say that what all collectivists desire to do is wrong. Specifically I don’t say that all supporters of conscription and taxation desire to do wrong. I say that what all supporters of conscription and taxation want to do is wrong.

I’m curious as to why David Friedman would think any of this is dishonest.

Sabotta sent me two comic strips he did about Meaghan Walker-Williams (who continues in her religious persecution of No Treason) using the Red Meat Construction Set. Click on each comic strip to enlarge and read it in it’s full glory.

Patri Friedman makes a strong and simple argument for why the War on Terror and proposed measures to address global warming are terrible bets.

No Treason has been moved to a new host. The main blog is now open for business, though I’m sure some parts of the site need fixing.